#4 - One Is the Loneliest Number

It was raining. One of those mornings where no one makes eye contact. Everyone just wants to get dry, find a seat, move on.

Rush hour. Trams packed. I found an empty seat up front. A win. At the next stop, an older man boarded. Neatly dressed, grey hair, steady on his feet.

I offered him my seat. He gently declined. I told him I was getting off soon. I wasn’t, but he accepted and sat. We rode in silence. Yet sometimes, you can feel when someone wants to say something before they do.

“So, we’re in for another wet week,” I opened. He cracked a smile, and that was enough.

Fifteen minutes of nothing talk that somehow meant something. When his stop came, he stood and asked, “I thought you were getting off soon.” He already knew the answer. He smiled and said, “Thank you.” That smile? It lingered with me long after the tram ride was over.

Some silences last longer than they used to. Not the kind that settles you, the kind that echoes loudly in your head.

You notice it in others first. Then, one day, in yourself.

You go for a walk, clear your head if you can, see if something shifts.

Loneliness doesn’t need a reason. It drifts in. Unnoticed. Not when you’re around people, but when you begin to feel unseen.

Even men who look steady, as they head home, sit at dinner, see themselves in the glass, sometimes let it through. Even the ones who know how to hold silence. Sometimes that’s where it leaks.

We’re human, after all. Built to connect. When contact thins, something inside marks the absence.

That ache? It tells you something mattered. And when the signal stays, it finds its way into your thinking, then stays a while longer than you meant it to.

Maybe it starts with a chair left empty over a meal. Or the awkward pause that stretches, or a question that’s unanswered.

Loneliness doesn’t shout. But we often hear its echo in our heads.

It’s not advice. Just a man saying what often goes unsaid. Hoping it stays with you, in the right way.

⸻

If this stirred something familiar, you’re not alone. In Australia, you can reach Lifeline 24/7 at 13 11 14.